Weekly UK album sales slump to lowest level since 1996

Weekly UK Album chart sales fell to their lowest level since 1996 over the weekend.

Keane’s fifth album ‘Strangeland’ topped the chart with sales of 19,982, which was over 58% lower than their sales for the previous week, where they also took the Number One spot.

It is the second time a UK Number One has sold fewer than 20,000 copies in any of the 646 weeks of the 21st century with the other occurring four weeks ago, when Adele’s ’21’ took the Number One spot with sales of only 17,065.

Tenacious D had looked odds-on for Number One all week, but only managed to sell 15,971 copies, which still landed them the Number Two spot, according to Music Week.

Total sales for the week are just under 1.35 million, which is 7.5% down from last week and almost 250,000 lower than this time last year. It is the lowest seven-day sale tally recorded since week-ending 22 June 1996 when just 1,277,279 albums were sold.

Singles sales are also down from last year’s mark by almost 7% to just over 3.15 million for 2012 so far.